Focus on environmental sustainability – Adutwum tells businesses

The Minister of Education, Dr Yaw Osei Adutwum, has underscored the need for corporate bodies and other organisations to inculcate sustainability in all spheres of their operations to protect the environment.

He said people and organisations ought to appreciate and understand the impact of their activities on the environment and take mitigating factors to ensure the sustainability of the environment.

According to him, the world was faced with global warming, climate change, with human activities such as illegal mining and high carbon emissions putting a strain on the environment and threatening future generations.

“Our world is in peril, we have island communities that are being swept away, water bodies being destroyed. We must, therefore, work together and stop this trend to be able to leave a better world for our children and grandchildren after we are no longer around,” he said.

Sustainability reporting 

Dr Adutwum was speaking at the National Stakeholder Dialogue on Sustainability Reporting in Accra last Wednesday.

The event, organised by the Institute of Chartered Accountants, Ghana (ICAG), in collaboration with the Association of Chartered Certified Accountants (ACCA), was on the theme: “Promoting the Adoption of Sustainability Standards- IFRS SI and S2 among Ghanaian Businesses.”

It brought together accountants, corporate bodies, regulatory agencies, accounting firms and other stakeholders in the financial sector to dialogue how best to promote the adoption and compliance of sustainability financial reporting standards as developed by the International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS).

The standards enjoined businesses to make sustainability part of their operations and make disclosures on how best they were implementing sustainability and climate-related goals to protect the environment.

In compliance with the standards, businesses must integrate Environment, Social and Governance (ESG) strategies and also adopt transparent, responsible and accountable practices with the protection of the environment at the centre of their operations.

Efforts

Giving a history of sustainability reporting, the President of ICAG, Sena Dake, said following the UN Climate Change Conference in 2021, the IFRS-S1, which sets out general sustainability-related disclosure requirements and IFRS S2 which deals with climate-related disclosures, were developed.

The standards, she said, were subsequently backed by the African Union, the G7, G20 and other global bodies.

The ICAG, she explained, played a crucial role in developing standards and had also gone further to revise its syllabus to include sustainability reporting, offering crucial training for chartered accountants to have the capacity to adequately deal with this discipline.

Again, she said ICAG embarked on a road show throughout the country to raise awareness of sustainability reporting among businesses.
“We have developed comprehensive training programmes that specifically focus on the intricacies of sustainability reporting, offering businesses practical guidance on how to incorporate these standards into their operations,” she.

Furthermore, she said the National Sustainability Reporting Implementation Committee (NSRIC) had been formed to drive the adoption of sustainability reporting standards across the country.

“The NSRIC has a mandate to oversee the development of guidelines that will help businesses navigate the often challenging requirements of IFRS S1 and S2,” she added.

Future generation­

For his part, the Deputy Director of the Sustainable Development Advisory Unit at the Presidency, Dr Felix Addo Yobo, said the country used to have values of protecting the environment for future generations.

“Unfortunately, these values are quickly eroding. The galamsey menace alone is enough evidence that indeed things are not the same anymore,” he said.